Brooks Robinson and the Baltimore Orioles

[whiteymet]

I saw someone posted a 180 back from the Salada set earlier.I wanted to give more background on the set and Brooks in particular.

As some of you may know there are 3 or 4 "rare" coins in the set. Two of which are Orioles. Brandt with the Oriolesas opposed to the normal Oriole. And Dick Williams with his name on the right.

If you read the write up about the 62 Salada coins in the SCD Standard Catalog and read the last two sentences you will learn about a TINY PERCENTAGE of the 180 backs that are different. Both the rare Brandt and Williams are part of this very rare early test print run.

Just to be clear these are NOT on ALL 180 backs, but rather on a VERY SMALL scale. In fact they are so rare that the SCD Catalog does not even assign a value to them because they turn up so rarely there are no records of sales.

As "luck" would have it for you Brooksie collectors, he is included in this early test print run.

Below I have scanned three different coins.

On the left is a prototype for the 1963 set that came out of Salada files. They wanted to see what a coin would look like in the metal shell. Here they used a basic steel color, while the coins that were issued were either a red or blue shell. They took a 62 paper Brooks out of a plastic shell and taped it into the metal shell you see.

In the middle is the "common" issue of the Brooks coin.

And on the right is the very rare early test print where you will note his name is lower where the word Robinson is even with his mouth while on the common coin Robinson is printed above his mouth. The word Orioles is also slightly moved on the test printing coin. So while ALL of these test printing coins are 180 backs not all 180 backs are the test coins.

Hope this all makes sense.